Burnt Out? You Don’t Need a New Job—You Need This

Have you ever wondered if you are burnt out or if this is just like what life feels like these days? Have you ever wondered if your tiredness, your lack of motivation, means that you need a new job or if this is just the price of participation in the modern economic climate? And what if you can't change jobs? You need the money or the market's bad or any number of reasons. How do you make your job more purposeful, more satisfying if you're trapped in it? Today we're having on Amina Altai, the author of The Ambition Trap. She is an executive coach who's helped thousands of women optimize their work lives. We are talking about the hidden reasons that so many of us are burnt out, including some that really, really surprised me that I've never heard anywhere else before. We're talking about how you can tell before you even get a job if it's going to burn you out and how you can find the best job fit that will make you feel energized and satisfied on a regular basis. We're talking about the best type of vacation for curing burnout and so much more. Welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where we skip past fluffy BS. You can do it self-help to get to the actual solutions to your real problems. So you can feel as good as possible every single day. I'm going to welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I want to start with how can somebody know if they're burnt out? Like how do we know what burnout feels like? First of all, are you feeling exhausted when you get to work for the day? Are you having trouble getting started? Do you need those five cups of coffee? jumpstart your motivation for the day? Are you starting to feel that negativism, cynicism, not just for your work, but for your coworkers, for other constituents that you support too? Are you starting to feel like it's laborious and burdensome to connect with them? And things that you used to really care about and be delighted about, you're starting to feel like, actually, I don't really care about that thing. It almost makes me feel empty. People also have physical symptoms too, right? So a lot of the times it manifests as GI issues, hair loss, brain fog, things like that too. Are there types of work though that lead to burnout more? Like if we are not working in line with our values, is that going to lead to burnout more? Okay, I'm going to answer this kind of backwards, but I feel like there's five things that really contribute to burnout. The first is biology. So women and people with a uterus, we have a tendency to become dysregulated and stay dysregulated longer because of something called corticotropin release factor. And listen, I am by no means an expert on the biology piece of this. I've just looked at the research and it takes us a little bit longer to process those chemicals and then stay in that state of dysregulation. Okay. So this is actually biological. This is something that's happening in our brains and our bodies with our hormones, et cetera. Exactly. So we just have to be a little bit aware of that, right? I think of it like babies with fontanelles, right? We have a little bit of a soft spot and we just have to be conscious that we have that tendency. The next piece is invisible labor. So invisible labor is the work that we do that's unseen and unpaid for. And so many of us do that, especially women, we do that at work and we do that at home, right? So it's You know, offering to be the office therapist or take the notes, all of those types of things, doing too much of that can tip us into burnout. Then there's visible labor. So that's the work that we do that's seen and paid for. And so many of us do way too much of it. Actually, I was reading, my book was part of the Next Big Idea Club. And one of their books of the day was talking about how we should move into a four-day work week because historically people only worked 15 hours a week, but it was the industrial revolution that led us to the five days. So we're all doing way too much of the visible labor anyway. Then there's systemic pieces, right? So, you know, systemic oppression is real. So the motherhood penalty, the wage gap, all of those things can absolutely contribute to burnout because of the emotional labor that we do inside of it. And then also how much visible labor we tend to lean into more to make up for the gaps, right? So, for example, if women are making 87 cents on the dollar to make up those 13 cents, maybe you're picking up a side job. And then that's really contributing to the burnout as well. And then the last piece is tolerations. the things that we're tolerating in our work and our lives that we need not be tolerating, that we maybe want to raise the standard on. So maybe that's setting a boundary. Maybe that's asking for more money. But what are the things we need to raise the standard on? And all of those five things together contribute to burnout. Which of those do you view as within our control and which do you view as outside of our control? So the biological piece is interesting, right? Because like I live in this body, but if I have that propensity to stay dysregulated, there's tools that I can use to support my nervous system. I think the invisible labor piece we can absolutely set boundaries around and the visible labor as well. Sometimes it's tricky, but I think that that is within our control. The systemic piece, I think, is a little trickier, right? We can all advocate for change. And I think that the more we lean into community and we do that together, the more supportive it can be. And then the tolerations piece, I think we have a little bit of agency over as well. Like, what am I tolerating that maybe I was raised to believe I need to tolerate and I don't actually need to tolerate that thing? The systemic piece is so interesting to me because there has been this greater conversation these days about like, are the men okay? Are the boys okay? And they've fallen so far so fast, particularly white men. And people are really talking societally about like, how do we bring up this faction of society? And I was looking into the stats around this. And they have fallen far fast, but that's because they were so high up originally. And they're still nowhere near where most any other group is. And it's so funny to me that we're like, oh, like, what about the men and the boys? And I do. I want everybody to have opportunities to be happy, to feel good in their bodies. And I'm like, is that the problem we need to be talking about solving right now? Like women, to your point, are still making 87 cents on the dollar. Feels like an equalization. We're like, oh, wait, but this little tidy faction is the problem. Yeah. How I think about it is this, like as a leadership trainer, too, it's like if we make men the enemy and we don't bring them on the journey, we're not going to create enough psychological safety for them that they will help us, right? Some people will go out of their way to help other historically excluded people because that's what they feel called to do. But I think if we often make the other person the other, they're going to feel like, well, there's no safety for me to be myself here. Why should I support that person and be in community with that person? So I think of it as like the high tide lifts all boats. But yes, I also think we need to go toward the most marginalized and lift those people up first and foremost. The invisible labor piece was really interesting to me because I've thought about invisible labor at home. We've done episodes about invisible labor at home. I have never thought about invisible labor at work. Can you highlight some times that this might be coming into play? Yeah, absolutely. So before I was an executive coach, I worked in marketing and brand management for a decade, and I was queen of the invisible labor. But it was actually really interesting because it pointed me in the direction of my next career that was much more aligned. So I would spend so much of my day sifting through people's emotions. So I was a director of marketing, and people would be in out of my office all day telling me about interpersonal challenges and how do I navigate this and that. And I would spend so much time supporting these people that I would do my actual marketing work from like 6 to 10 p.m. That was such an indication of like you're overdoing on the invisible label. You're not getting paid for that part, right? Yeah, you need to support your team, but maybe that's 20% of the work, not 90% of the work in the way that you're showing up in it. And so it can look like that. It can also look like always volunteering to take the office notes to be the one that is planning the bonding activities, right? The where are you going above and beyond that's so outside the job description that you're not getting paid for that thing, but you feel compelled to do it. What if that stuff is fun? So I'm like picturing myself in my office days and I like would love if everybody came to me with their relationship drama and I love my water cooler conversations. What if by setting these boundaries, you're taking away the parts of work that are enjoyable or like the event planning and stuff like that? I think it's the ratio. So it has to fill you up and not be depleting, right? So if you love planning the events, you love the connection, you love bringing everybody together, do a little bit of that, sure, but not so much that it eclipses your other work and then you're staying there all hours of the night to do your quote unquote real job. How do we know if the job is the problem? I would love as clear of directions, questions, rubrics, something. So anybody listening can identify, should I stay in this job or should I leave this job? I'm a big proponent of alignment. I often think that it's never exactly the job that's a problem and it's never exactly us that's the problem. It's usually like a square peg round hole type of thing. So how do I identify if we're in a square peg round hole unless you're in an extreme situation where the environment is harmful and that can be the case for sure. I believe that purposeful work is the expression of five things. It needs to leverage our gifts, our zone of genius. It needs to be values aligned. It needs to be connected to the impact that we want to have. It needs to help us cultivate a sense of contentment and our needs have to be met. And if we're checking the box on those five areas, we're likely in purposeful work. It doesn't mean that it feels perfect and amazing. There's usually areas that we need to kind of turn the volume up on or down on, but at least we're playing in the right playing field. Does everybody get to do purposeful work? So it is a form of privilege, right? And I don't know anybody that only lives in their zone of genius. And basically what I'm a proponent for is that every day we just spend a few more minutes in purposeful work. So let's go through all five of those things. Let's start with the first one. How do we know what our gifts are? So I love the body of work from Gay Hendricks around Zones of Genius, and I have a version of his four areas. I think it's three areas that we live in too. So we have our eh zone, which is the space that we're average at. We have our excellent zone, which is the space that we're practiced, polished, and really proficient at. And most of us spend our lives in that zone. And then there's the exceptional zone where we're just off the charts genius. And most of the time, our gifts in this space are innate. And it doesn't mean that we don't have to cultivate those gifts, not at all. We do actually have to spend time honing them and making them even better, right? Like thinking of a child that comes to the planet as like a musical virtuoso. It's like, yeah, but they're still working to be that musical virtuoso. So we have to spend time there. But we don't have to push, force, or effort for it to come through, right? There's an innateness to it. And it's often when you find yourself in the space of flow. And the other way that I like to think of it is when you go into a room or a social gathering, what is the thing that you're layering in that wasn't there before? What is the thing that you are bringing that was absent until you were in that space? I work with a lot of people that are really high achieving and so many of them are like, I don't have genius. Like there's a lot of things I'm really good at, but like I'm not genius. And some of them will be like actual Olympic gold medalists and I'm like looking at their medals in the background. I'm like, yeah, sure. Like looks like there's some genius there. but so many of us readily discount it because of how genius has been presented to us, culturally speaking. We think it's like Einstein and the high IQs or the high test scores, but that's actually not the case, right? High test scores, for example, a lot of the times what it shows is actually motivation, not aptitude. And so I think we really need to reclaim this narrative. And when I was writing the book, I researched the word genius and traced it all the way back to ancient Rome. And it's always a hero and never a heroine, right? So so many of us think that heroes are male. There was even a study that was done by 92nd Street Y, and they found that girls as young as six think that genius is a male trait. And so I think so many of us have to really reclaim this, that we all have forms of genius. It just looks different for each of us. So if we're the people sitting there and we're like, I don't think I have this, and we don't have access to you individually to point out what our zones of genius are. I think it's really important that we do start with ourselves first. And we ask ourselves these questions of like, when do I find myself in the space of flow? What is innate? What do I layer into these groups? Things like that. Where do I find replicable success? But if you still don't know the answer, asking three friends that really see you and really see you is the operative phrase here because so many people will project, but three people that really see what they think your genius is. And there will be connective tissue and through line, even if they're saying slightly different things. And it's such a wonderful feel-good exercise because who doesn't want to hear what other people think that their genius is? Okay, so let's say we identify our zone of genius. If we're trying to fight burnout at work, is the idea the more of that genius we can bring into our day-to-day life, the less burned out we're going to feel. Yes, because it's our highest yield contribution, right? When we think about it, because it has this innateness, I don't have to push force or effort to be so good at it. And what I can contribute far outpaces what other people could in that area and far outpaces what I could contribute in my excellence or my eh zone. And so the example that I always use is my marketing career was a zone of excellence for me. Like people really liked me. I did great work, but I worked so hard at it that I burned out and developed to autoimmune diseases. And so I can very clearly see the difference between my coaching world and my marketing world. Okay, so let's say somebody listening is like, my zone of genius is throwing great events, like throwing great parties. That's what I'm really good at. That's what I love. I love entertaining. I love hosting. Their friends confirm it via text message. Their daily job is making PowerPoint presentations. How do they reconcile those two things. Yeah. So if you are working in the context of an organization, I think it can be really helpful to go to your manager and be like, I just learned that these are my zones of genius. I'm really curious if there is any stretch projects that I could work on that will allow me to get on the court with this in a really small way. So like maybe we are planning our team offsite. Could I help with the team offsite? But then are we taking on the invisible or visible labor at work? But if it's generative and it's actually filling us up, then that's okay, right? It's that ratio again. And we could also say like, if I step into this, could I then hand off this project too, right? Kind of like shifting that ratio a little bit. And when do you think that misalignment is a sign that we should be looking for a different job versus trying to shift a little bit at our current job? I think it's the ratio again, right? So if we notice that we're living so far outside of our zone of genius and nothing that we're doing in the day-to-day is in our zone of excellence or our zone of genius, that's probably going to be really uncomfortable. And we probably couldn't sustain that. Moreover, we probably aren't doing an amazing job, right? One of my zones is admin. Like it's kind of shocking, like managing a calendar sometimes for me, it's like I'm missing appointments, like admin for me, just like my brain fundamentally doesn't compute. Same. And I have somebody on my team who is so helpful with it and I still manage to like miss stuff, you know what I mean? I'm like, I have somebody helping me and I'm so bad at it. Yeah, same. And so if you're working in that space, you're probably not going to stay working in that space because you're not doing a great job, right? So a company might let you go because you're missing the mark so much. And so it's untenable to work so far outside of our genius, both for the company and for ourselves and our burnout. What if our zone of genius doesn't have real market value? I'm a big proponent of stacking our genius. So I believe that we all have multiple forms of genius. And when we bring together those multiple forms, that's really where we differentiate. You know, I think that you, one of your forms of genius is who you are as a journalist, right? Like your interview skills are so incredible. And Oprah also has that form of genius, right? But when you bring it together with your other forms of genius, that's how you really differentiate. So if one of your forms of genius doesn't have market value, can you bring it together with other forms to create that market value? What's another example of that? I think about like, I have friends who are musical theater geniuses, and they really grew up in that whole world. And then nobody succeeds on Broadway. It's such a teeny percentage of people. So then they have to bring that into the corporate office environment. How could they bring that in? Yeah. So that's a great example. I actually have one client that was a musical theater kid and then started their career there, was in production. But the salaries there are so terrible that they literally couldn't sustain their family. And so now they've translated those skills into sales coaching. They're a fractional, like a chief revenue officer. And then they train these teams on how to dial up their revenue using a lot of these theater practices. And it's so interesting because I'll do these exercises with them and they're like, oh, we used to do an exercise like that in dance and it's a nervous system exercise. So they're using all of these embodiment tools, these creative storytelling tools and just translate it to a new area. So it sounds like one of the secrets of this is not just saying my genius is writing. My genius is musical theater, but almost really down into what are the skills that are within that writing? What are the skills that are within that musical theater? Or what are the skills that I learned when I was on the football team in high school, et cetera? Exactly. And sometimes it looks different than we want, right? Sometimes we think it has to be in this very specific area, but there's probably like a bit of a mindset trap there. And when we allow ourselves to come out of that story and see all the ways that something can translate, that it can feel even better, right? So that client that I was giving the example of originally felt like their career needed to be squarely in performance. And there was so much grief in processing that. And now they're happier than they've ever been because they're using all their skills. Their needs are actually taken care of and they can support their family in a way that they were never able to before. And so if we can come beyond what we think it should look like, it can be really expansive. Okay. So that was one of purposeful work. What's the second one? Okay. It needs to be values aligned because when we're working outside of our values, it literally feels like pushing a boulder up a hill and we can't go at the distance, right? Like I think about my own values. if I were working outside of that, I would just be dialing it in because my values are so important to me. I'm just not connected to the work in that way. And how can we tell if our work is values aligned? Understanding what your values are first and foremost, and then going through each of them and asking yourself, well, how deeply am I on the court with these values? If I value women's empowerment, I want to ask myself on a scale of one to 10, how deeply do I embody that in my work? Okay, I embody it at like a five or a six, but for me to feel really good, I want to get it closer to an eight. Okay, then what do I need to do to get that closer to an eight? Maybe I volunteer for the women's ERG at work. Maybe I mentor some women on my team, right? What are the ways that I can turn the volume up on that value? I just keep circling around the idea of like, do we get to have these preferences in this economy, in this world? I mean, I live in the Bay Area. I know a lot of people who are working for companies that they're very much not values aligned with, but but they don't feel like they can get jobs that they would be values aligned with in like the tech world. I feel like as a rule, the invitation is like, do no harm, right? So if I'm working outside of my values because I need to put food on the table for my family, so valid, right? It's like, like I've been in that position where it's like, I need to take a job because I just need to pay the bills. But then am I, am I living so far outside my values that I'm causing harm to myself or others? And if the answer is no, great. Okay, continue to get that paycheck until you can make a different choice. But if it is causing harm to you and others, maybe you want to choose something else if you can. Is perhaps one of the ways that it's causing harm to ourselves that we might not even be aware of is this like sense of burnout that we didn't attribute to the values mismatch. But maybe we think that's not causing harm. And in fact, it is. And that's why we feel so burnt out every single day. Yeah, those things can absolutely be connected. And I think then we need to kind of audit like what are our values? How far am I living outside of them? And then what sort of emotional labor am I doing because I'm living outside of those values so much, right? So if I were working for an organization that didn't support women, that would eat away at me every single day. And then I would need a lot of tools to expand my window of tolerance so I could withstand that every single day. So it kind of goes back again to that ratio and how we're taking care of ourselves to support the harm or the discomfort. How do we know which values we should like prioritize at the top and which ones we can let slide a little bit more? I often have my clients make a must-haves, nice-to-haves, and deal breakers list. And then when you've done your list, it's really important to do the nice-to-haves because oftentimes we'll conflate those things where we're like, okay, you know, this is a job that's like super in the area that I want to be working in. It's really connected to the impact that I want to have, but like it's only half the salary, but it's okay because they're giving me this parking spot, right? It's like, well, that parking spot's a nice-to-have. It doesn't make up for the fact that your needs aren't met, right? So the nice-to-haves are often connected to the values that we're like, okay, that's a secondary value. It's not a top tier value. And so it's okay if I compromise on that one, because it's not the one that's most alive for me that if I compromise on it, it's going to feel really harmful. You've worked with thousands of people. Are there things that you find people are typically less happy when they compromise on, even if they think it's going to be okay? So many times I see people go for the shiny object. It's the thing that looks close to the dream. It looks almost aligned, but there's like some red flags and some reasons why it's not exactly aligned, but they're so committed that this is a thing. And you're like, okay, I just have to let them go toward that, get their lesson, and then we'll probably course correct. So I don't believe that there's ever like a right path or like a perfect way to do things. And I think we have to get our lessons, but I see a lot of people go for the shiny object. Do you think people are typically happier when they compromise on a job that feels really aligned, like they love it a lot or on money? Money is very important, especially now when I was doing the research for my book, what I was seeing was that even people that are higher up on the economic ladder are feeling a sense of financial precarity. Even people in the C-suite are feeling financial precarity. And when you live paycheck to paycheck, which is like two thirds of Americans, there's such a huge impact on our physical and mental health. And so I don't think we can discount how important money is. And so I think it depends on your particular situation and your context, like if you are the primary breadwinner and if you have a family to support. But I also believe, and this is like maybe a little bit idealistic, but I have a lot of proof points and a lot of evidence that we can have both things, that we can have the money and we can have the work that is aligned. If we feel like that's not true, if we feel like we have the money situation that we need and we're going to make all these other compromises to stay there, are there other things we can do to support not feeling burnt out? If you're like, hey, listen, I'm committed to this place. It's a really great salary, but I know it's not aligned, but I'm just here for a season to get as much money as I can to support myself and my family. Cool. Like do that, right? Do what is best for you. And then what are the ways that I can get these values met outside of work? So I feel like I'm still filling up my cup and I'm still expanding that window of tolerance and feeling nourished enough. And then can you just narrow us in? I know you're kind of like, it's a ratio. We got to think about it. We got to wait for ourselves. But if we're trying to decide if this is a job we should quit because it's not values aligned enough, is there like a question we can ask ourselves? Honestly, for my clients and for myself, one of the things I say is 60-40, right? So if 60% of the time you're living in your genius, you're living in your values, it's connected to your impact, all of those things, great, right? 40% of the time we're not. That's the reality that we live in. Nothing is perfect. But I think if we're tipping beyond that, if it's 50-50 or 40-60, right, then I think it tends to erode our sense of well-being. Well, that's interesting. I'm terrible at math, but we're going through the five components of purposeful work. You kind of want three of them, right? Well, I think you want something in each of them, but like 60% in each of them, right? So if I have 10 zones of genius and I'm on the court with six, great. Okay. So we have our zone of genius. We have our values. What's next? Impact. Are we connected to the impact that we want to have, whether that's to our family, community, or the greater good? And this is where some of those questions you were asking before, this is a good litmus test, right? Because if my values and my impact is more connected to my family, I'm probably looking at this framework a little differently. I'm like, okay, it makes the money that I need to make for my family. But if you're more connected to community or the greater good and you're like, okay, well, it's not supporting the women in the way that I want it to, then it looks a little bit different for us. Impact, we get to define how close it is to us or how far out it reaches. And then I think it impacts the other areas. This is one that I feel like is really ripe for shoulds, for narratives of like, this is the impact I should want versus this is the impact I actually want. Do you have any advice for getting rid of some of those should conversations we might be having? I love that. Nobody's ever asked that question, but I think that anytime we're in the language of should, we're usually in somebody else's belief system. So if you're thinking about impact, you know, like, okay, well, it should be more far reaching. Well, whose story is that? Whose voice is that? How old is that voice? And then can you make a choice from yourself versus making a choice from these other people's belief systems? Yeah, because I know a lot of people who have shame about, like, I want a simpler life. I want a life that just feels good. Wake up every day. I get to drink my coffee in the sunshine with my kids, with my cat, my dog, whatever. And I think because we are confronted by so many giant lives on a day-to-day basis in a way that we never have before been in history, I think you can feel like, oh, is this enough? Am I wanting enough here? Yeah, I think that that's such an interesting trap, right? Stephen Cope, who wrote the book, The Great Work of Your Life, he says, you can't miss your dharma. You can't miss your fate. And I really believe that's true, right? So it's like, if it feels right size for you to like sit on the porch with your cat, sipping your latte, and like you take care of your family, that's beautiful. It's your life. You get to define it. You get to live it. You're the main character of your life. Nobody else, right? And I think we really have to take ourselves out of those stories and just keep coming back to ourselves about what we actually want. If we feel like we're not having the impact, but we don't want to quit our jobs and maybe we're not having it in our normal lives, too, can we increase our impact at work? Yeah, absolutely. And we can also increase our impact outside of work, too, right? Even this year, I'm thinking about, well, how can I get deeper on the court with volunteering, right? I feel like I have a big impact at work, but there's other communities that I'm not reaching that I want to help. Or how can I give more scholarships? And so we can always ask ourselves, well, I want to have a bigger impact on this particular area. Can I work with my manager or the greater team to see what it looks like to spend more time in that space? Or if it's not possible at work, how can I do it outside of work? Like I have a friend, she's wonderful. She is an accountant and she works at a pharmaceuticals company and she has a lot of chronic health conditions. And so she chose this role because it really stable it pays really well but it not as connected to the impact that she wants to have And so every tax season she volunteers with underserved communities to do their taxes for free And so there ways that we can get on the court with the impact outside of our work too I'm going to be really honest. When I first heard about this product, I thought it was a scam. 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But this is an invitation for us to get really clear about what we need to show up so fully so we can play all out for the dream and to ask for that and to be met in that. How do we know the difference between a want and a need? From a nervous system perspective, needs are very basic, right? I'm very immersed in nervous system work. I'm actually doing a training on it right now too. And so the needs are very basic, but I think sometimes like you just have to go toward the want, right? Like I have a desire to have this bigger life and my needs are this, but to thrive, I actually need this. So needs and thriving, I think are distinct and we get to live in the thriving if that's what we want for our lives. So you work with all these people who have a hard time identifying their needs. That means there's probably a lot of people listening who are going to be having a hard time identifying their needs. Yep. Help us out. So oftentimes the salary part is really tricky. And so doing the math actually grounds our nervous system. And I literally did this with a client last week where they are interviewing for a new role and they're like, okay, I think this is what I need for base. And I was like, really? It seems a little low. Let's do the math. And I literally have a spreadsheet that we take them through about all the different areas of their life and what it costs. And if we want to put money aside for retirement and we want the good health care and all things. And we did the math and that number was way bigger than what they thought it was. And then we had to sit in the discomfort between where they are and where they need to go and all the stories that live there, right? Of like, am I worthy of that thing? Am I asking for too much? Will I have to overwork to be able to have that number? and then we have to work with all of that to allow them to feel whole in that number. Okay, so that's one trick is like literally almost like make a budget for your life and then you can figure out what salary you need based on that budget, which I love. I've done budgets, but I've never kind of like backwards my way into what salary I should be making. Are there any other sort of tactical strategies we can use to figure out our needs? Well, doing the math is really important. And then what do you need for the different areas of your life? In the book, I have a nourishment meter, which is the 13 different areas of our life. So everything from our financial needs to our need for support to our boundaries to our community and our sex life, all those things. What do you need in each of those areas? And obviously sex life doesn't come into play with work, right? So put that in the life category. Exactly. But asking yourself in order to feel whole, full and nourished in that area, what do you really need? And I also believe that as humans, you know, we leapfrog a little bit, right? So if I can't be fully honest about what I need today, can I just inch toward it? And now that I've stood in that and it feels safer in my body, can I stretch a little and then ask for the thing that I really need? And what if our needs don't feel available to us? What if we do the budget and we're like, I need $200,000 a year to live the life that I want to live. And we are making $70,000 a year and we don't have a straightforward path to $200,000. So I think it goes back to what you're saying about separating the needs and the thriving, right? And then what's the crawl, walk, run approach, right? So if I can't get to $200,000 this year, can I get to $100,000 this year? What does it look like? Can I be met in that? And then how can I map out and meet my needs maybe at a 70% threshold based on this other salary? Then once you've got the $100,000, can I get to $130,000, to $160,000, and eventually to $200,000? Can we leapfrog our way there and leapfrog our thriving and our needs at the same pace? I imagine, though, that could set you up to have needs clash against each other. So maybe I have a need for rest and restorative time, and I have a need for $200,000 a year that it's going to require me to get a side hustle or to put in extra hours. How do we balance competing needs? I think the money conversation is a really interesting one and it's definitely a case-by-case basis because I think a lot of the times, particularly with my clients, there's a lot of under-earning and under-charging. And when we step into the zone of genius, because it's such a high-yield contribution, we can probably charge a little more and ask for a little more than we've been asking for, but it's an edgy conversation. So I think that we need to decouple that in order to have my needs met, I'm going to have to overwork because I think that's usually the equation that we set up. But I think that we can live into another equation. So you're saying more money does not necessarily need to equal more work. And do you think that's even true if you're not an entrepreneur? I have evidence, right? I don't think it's universally true. And I really want to honor people that are in the space that it's like I'm at the max that I can in this organization. There's zero wiggle room. Like I've been there as well. And then I think sometimes it's like, well, if these really are my needs, maybe I need to look elsewhere. I have evidence that we can find a different equation. I don't mean to press. No, no, press, press, press. But I do think that this is just something I hear from so many friends, so many listeners, especially in their 30s, early 40s, late 20s, like that stage of their life. It just feels like they have so many needs at the same time. I need to make money. I need to find a way to figure out my fertility conversation or to be a mom. I need to find a way to find a partner or stay connected with my partner. Or maybe I have aging parents I'm taking care of on top of that. And oh, wait, there's a loneliness crisis and I need to find time to connect with my girlfriends and all of that. There's so many needs stacked on top of each other. How do we know which ones to let go of? Are we trying to just do like the bare minimum, but with all of them? How do we meet all these competing needs? Yeah, this is a great question. And I think that we need to radically prioritize, right? Like I am divorced. And so like I live alone. And, you know, in many ways, that's wonderful. But in many ways, I'm responsible for all the bills. and I also have chronic illness, right? So I, especially after my divorce, I had to get radically honest with myself about what I could afford in my new life because I'm no longer sharing the bills with people. So for me, a non-negotiable is my healthcare because I have chronic illness. So what are the non-negotiables for you that there's no wiggle room? Maybe it is your retirement. Maybe it is your healthcare. Maybe it is taking care of your parents. Maybe it's prioritizing your fertility journey. So what are the absolute non-negotiables? And then what falls into the, you know, would be nice to do now, but I could actually delay a little bit. And then what do we not need to do right now, right? I don't need to invest in a car or redoing my house or whatever those things are. That would be a nice to do someday. Maybe I'm conflating it with a need for today, but like there really is a priority and an order. Are there any needs that you feel like if we paid a little bit more attention to, it would have an outsized positive impact in our lives? I mean, our needs to take care of ourselves, right? Like how the whole reason I became a coach was because I got so sick in my previous career and I almost died. I got a call from my doctor where she says, hey, you're days away from multiple organ failure. You have to get your life together. And I went to coaching and coaching shifted my life so much that I became a coach because I was like, oh my God, all of these things are available to me when I actually take care of myself, when I actually have my head on straight, when my body isn't in a state of constant hypervigilance. And so that shifted my life materially. Tell me that story. Tell me the story of when you kind of had this wake up call in your life. I was six years into my marketing career and I'm the child of immigrants and, you know, was told like, you just keep your head down. You work really hard. And if you do that, like you'll have everything that you want in life. Right. And I'm somebody that loves shiny things. I was like, cool, I understand. Work really hard. You'll have this beautiful life. And I just threw myself into that and was the first one in the last one out at work was just working these really wild hours, like 70, 80 hour work weeks, I had started to have some symptoms, but I was just really ignoring them. And I was taught to, right? You just keep going. You don't pay attention. What were your symptoms? Brain fog, weight loss, hair loss. Hair loss is the one that actually sent me to the doctor because I had, I was like 27 and had this like bald spot right at the front. And I was like, can't do this. And then I went to seven different doctors because at first they were like, oh, you seem fine. And then I just had this inner knowing of like, I feel like I should keep pursuing this. And then I found this doctor and, you know, she got all these tests. And then she called me one Friday and said, Amina, if you don't go to the hospital now, instead of going to work, you'll be days away from multiple organ failure. And what was going on? Well, I have celiac disease and Hashimoto's and the celiac disease was so mismanaged that I lost the ability to absorb anything. And so I think my ferritin was three and my iron was two. And when you're that depleted, you will literally go into organ failure. And so she was like, you have to go to the hospital. But the wild thing is, and I've only started telling the second part of this story recently, is that I actually didn't go to the hospital. I did go to work that day because I lived so far outside of my body and was just so used to staying in momentum. And then throughout the day, the conversation just kind of landed and I was like, oh my God, maybe I should do something about this. And then I eventually went to the doctor. But yeah, I was so in a state of dysregulation. I was so living out. I was living so far outside of my body that the news didn't even hit me at first. Wow. That's wild. What were your lessons from them? I call it my stop moment because there's like a literal fork in the road. Like you keep going even a couple more days, you will exit the planet early, right? Or do you choose another way? And it was so wild because a couple of days after I got that call from my doctor, my roommate at the time, she comes home from work. She's like telling me, she's like, oh, this woman that I work with, she just went to this life coaching retreat weekend, and I didn't know anything about it, but I just heard those words and was like, I need to be there. Like, I don't know anything about this organization, but I need to be there. And it had me really look at the way that I was showing up in the world because I was so unconscious. And I think that was honestly such a huge piece of the journey because I finally saw my own role in my life. And listen, I am not saying that chronic illness is our fault whatsoever. I really do not like that narrative. I have a body that is more susceptible to that, right? We have a lot of autoimmune disease in my family. And also there's environmental components, but the way that I was showing up, the way that I was managing stress, the way that I was working was not supporting this body and I needed to choose another way. And so I'm very grateful that hindsight's 20-20 at the time is very painful, but looking back, it's like, I'm so grateful that that was my journey. So you think that one of the big ways that women are missing out on a need that would pay dividends is really self-care, not like face masks and whatever, but like true self-care. True self-care, exactly. Not the stuff on the outside, but the stuff on the inside. I ended up writing my book, The Ambition Trap, and because I was kind of a student of ambition my whole life, and my thesis in the book is that so much of our ambition and our relationship to work is actually driven by our core wounds. and I think I was really living that way. And when you're coming from a core wound, you have this insatiable desire to achieve and to succeed and everything's outside of yourself. Everything's external. You're not doing the work on the inside, but really we're seeking outside of ourselves the work that actually is on the inside. So what core wounds were you trying to address by trying to achieve so much? There's five core wounds that I talk about in the book, rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and injustice, and I have a rejection wound. I have a betrayal wound and I have a humiliation wound. When we are coming from these wounds, we also wear a corresponding mask. So if you have an abandonment wound, the mask you wear is dependent, where you're overly reliant on others. If you have a rejection wound, the mask you wear is avoidance or withdrawal. Like you won't throw your hat in the ring for things, you'll avoid hard things. If you have a humiliation wound, the mask you'll wear is masochism or martyrdom, right? So like, let me be the most helpful. Let me do all the work. Let me take the hit so nobody else has to. If you have a betrayal wound, which is where you felt like your caregivers didn't show up in the way that you had hoped, the mask you'll wear is control, where you try to dot every I, cross every T. And then if you have an injustice wound, which is where you feel like your individuality and childhood is restrained, the mask you'll wear is rigidity or perfectionism. I hear myself in a few of those. So we can have a couple. Yes. Okay. Whenever I share this work, people literally have like a moment. Yeah. I was like, oh, check, check, check. I have three. So the masks I wear are avoidance, control, and masochism. And you can imagine all three of those together can, you know, make for a bit of a wobbly journey. And it was really showing up in my work. And I was seeking all these things outside of myself, trying to control everything, being the most hardworking, but also like kind of living in the shadows and avoiding hard things. And so it was kind of a recipe for a crash and burn. And so I think so much of the work is looking at those wounds. Okay. So I would say if you're listening, like go back and re-listen to those. Just give yourself a second, like maybe write down like this is what I have or look at an ominous book because she talks about all these. And I do think this is an under discussed reason why so many of us are feeling burnt out because we're operating from a place of these wounds. So 100 percent. Let's say we hear ourselves, we identify ourselves in these wounds. How do we begin to not operate from that place? I think awareness is literally 80 percent of the work. So the minute I saw like my humiliation and betrayal wounds to the control and the masochism, I was like, I see that everywhere in my life. I have four sisters. I was talking to one of my sisters and she was like, yeah, girl, like you're so controlling. This was years ago. And I was like, oh my God, I am. I had no idea. And then I started to see all the ways in my life where I was just so hypervigilant, trying to catch every ball before it dropped because I was so worried about that happening because I grew up in a little bit of chaos. You start to see it mirrored back everywhere. And then it's a moment to moment choice of can I choose again? Can I choose something different in this moment? It's uncomfortable, but can I? I love things where awareness is like a big part of the battle because it's just you can have these big aha moments just listening to a podcast like this. And you're like, oh, my gosh, that's me. That's I'm operating from this place. And that's why I feel exhausted all the time. The other thing that I want to touch on is you said that there's an ownership you need to take over your own life at some point. Like you have these chronic diseases and you're not responsible for them, but you have to live in your body at a certain point. Right. I hear from a lot of people who feel like living a good life is impossible with the constraints of the world, whether it's in their own bodies, like chronic illness, whether it's the political situation, whether it's the economic situation, whether it's the fear, the soup that we are all steeped in day to day. What would you say to those people? One of my practices is life is always gonna be up and down, right, there's gonna be moments of delight and there's gonna be moments of despair. Like I live in New York City and I don't know why I do this, but I often look out the window and I'm like, today, somebody is having the best day of their life in the city and somebody is having the worst day of their life in the city. And I think it's just interesting to think of it that way. Right. And then our job is when life is up and down like this, how much can we ride the middle? As I was writing the book, I got divorced. My mom was diagnosed with cancer. My grandma passed away. There was like a lot happening that was really taxing. And so it was literally a moment to moment practice of like all of these things are happening. I want to feel the feelings of them because it's so real. And then how can I ride the middle of it and not go to these extremes? because sometimes when we go to the extremes, we have a tendency to live there. So pragmatically, what does riding the middle look like? So for example, a lot of us, when we're having a really hard time, right? We're thinking about the political situation or we're thinking about how the motherhood penalty and how that's impacting our lives, right? In this room, in this moment now, is that threat here? The threat is not here for me, is a threat here for you, right? So being here in this moment, so a mindfulness practice, right? So whether that's breath work, whether that's looking at five colors in the room, explaining or describing five textures in the room, right? Bringing yourself into this moment because so much of what we do is we take ourselves to the future or to the past. And when we do that, that actually takes us to a state of dysregulation. And then we're living in the story and the pain and the discomfort when it's not actually here. And this is not spiritual bypassing whatsoever. When the pain is here, we deal with the pain a hundred percent, but we often have a propensity to mine the pain and the discomfort versus being with what is. What is that about? Like, why do I have the urge to pull out my phone and look at all of the horrors of the world in the middle of my day? I mean, it's probably a form of hypervigilance, right? Like if I know everything that's happening, I can control or be prepared, right? Which is definitely, I don't know which wound, which wound, that's like a wound. Okay. I'm like, I got that one. I feel if I can do something, I don't know what that something is, I'll be able to keep myself and everybody in the world safe, but I can't figure out what that something is. So I spend my entire life just being like, well, maybe it's this thing. Maybe it's this thing. Maybe it's this thing. I'm with you. Exactly. Right. Because if I'm taking action, at least I'm doing something. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that is a form of hypervigilance. Likely. And maybe identifying that that's coming from a place of wound. Awareness is 80 percent and we can stop doing that. Exactly. In this moment, what can I choose that will be different? Right. So me going through social media and mining the pain, there's actually not much that I can do about it in this moment. But in the broader scheme of my life, there's things that I can take action on and I'll do that. So we've done zone of genius. We've done values. We've done impact. And we've done needs. We have one left. The last piece is contentment. And it's actually connected to what we were just talking about. So, so many people are like, well, how does like purpose, ambition, and contentment, like how do those things sit side by side? They feel at odds. But when I was researching, so contentment from Eastern traditions, specifically from Eastern Bhutan, it's this word chokshay. And it translates into English as unconditional wholeness or the knowledge of enough. So it's this idea that regardless of what's happening outside of ourselves, can we have this knowledge of enough, this reminder that we are unconditionally whole regardless of the achievement, the title, the accolade that I get. And I think that that's a constant practice for us because we tie so much of our worth outside of ourselves. What's the practice? Because I'm like, I definitely tie so much of my worth outside of myself. Yeah. So it goes back to those core wounds, right? So where do I have a wound and where am I seeking something outside of myself to heal the wound? I also think that, you know, contentment is this very stable state, whereas emotions are transient, right? They're meant to shift all the time, right? It's sort of a chemical response. But so many of us want to hold on to a state of happiness, for example, right? We're like, oh, my God, like that's the desired state. I want to stay in that space of joy. And if I'm not staying in that space of joy, I've done something wrong. But they're supposed to shift all the time. And our job is to ride the middle, not hold on to the happiness, not avoid the despair, but find a way to ride the middle. And I think we can do an emotion audit, too, and understand, well, what are the emotions that I'm really gripping on to? And that's like my desired state in life, and I'm not making space for anything else. And what are the emotions that I'm really avoiding? And then starting to have a looser relationship with both. And you think, just to be clear, that happiness should not be the goal, but contentment should be. Exactly. Are there daily practices for contentment? mindfulness, right? Contemplative practices are really, really helpful. Nervous system work, I think, is really helpful as well. What is nervous system work? What does that look like? It can look so many different ways. A body of work that I'm immersed in is called mapping, and it is a mindfulness practice where you bring awareness to two different points of the body. Okay, so everybody listening, where is your tongue in your mouth right now? I know that's a weird question, but is it at the top, the middle, or the bottom? Mine's at the top. Wonderful. So top is rest and digest. Bottom of our mouth is fight or flight. And our tongue happens to be in this methodology that I'm referring to. It tends to be a black and white indicator. And so we have all of these different reference points in our bodies. Some are black and white, some are not. And so our bodies are changing and moving all the time. And so we want to bring awareness to these different parts of our body. So if we're feeling a little wonky, let's say, like, let's say fear is feeling really alive. We're about to go give a big talk, but we don't feel like we're in our bodies. is just pay attention to two points, right? It could be the tip of your tongue to the bottom of your chin and you just bouncing awareness between those two points And after you do it for two minutes that the baseline you start to notice something shift Maybe your tongue moves up maybe it moves down And then you want to stay with that practice until you start to feel a bit more harmonious. And so our bodies have all these different tells. It looks different for everybody. For example, my left shoulder tends to go back and that's part of my flight response, right? Because I'm like getting ready to run. So that's a tell for me. Everybody's body has different tells, but that little mindfulness practice can bring us back into homeostasis. And can it be any two points? Like, can I be like my eye and my ear? Yeah. Or like my left boob and my right boob. Exactly. Okay. We want to be rather close to each other. We don't need to overthink it either. But yeah, just finding two points. And just because it brings you into the moment. We have this tendency to like go to the future. It will go to the past. But this mapping practice brings you into this very moment of where is my body in space? Because when we go to the past or the future, we tend to leave our bodies, right? Our brain can't update the map of the moment. It can't update the room that we're in because we're in the past or the future. So this simple practice brings you back into this moment. Okay, so we have these five different facets of purposeful work. I just want you to bring us into, we're trying to figure out whether we have 60% of these and if we should quit our job or if we should stay in our job. Is it literally just like writing them all down? Like, is it like a gut feeling? There's so much information there and I want to help people kind of catalog it in their head. Totally. Yes. Writing it down, I think is really helpful. any sort of journaling practice because it becomes a full body exercise. So I would go section by section and I would say, what are my zones of genius? Okay, I've identified 10. Okay, six of these I'm on the court with at work. Awesome. What are my values? I've identified these four. I'm on the court with three out of the four. Awesome. Here's the impact that I want to have. Actually, it's not connected to the work that I'm doing, but that feels okay because it's this work is, you know, connected to my zones of genius is connected to my values and I'm getting my impact met outside of work? What are my needs, right? So what are my needs in terms of salary, in terms of paid time off, in terms of support staff, getting really clear on what your needs are. And then are those needs being met? At least, you know, 60% of them, right? And with the needs, I have people break it down into the must-haves, nice-to-haves, and deal-breakers because I do think it's very important. And then contentment. 60% of the time, am I feeling that evenness? Am I feeling like I can cultivate a sense of contentment? Do I feel like I'm in my body? Do I feel grounded? And if the answer is yes, great. If not, there's some tools that we can use. But literally going section by section and seeing, are you in that right ratio? Yeah. And it also feels like they would all speak to each other too. Like I feel like if I'm in my zone of genius, I'm probably more likely to be content. Like it's an interesting web. A hundred percent. There's absolutely overlap. And here's the thing I'll say too, is like, I don't believe in like the perfect job or the right next step. We just need to keep deciding, taking action, observing what's happening, and then responding and going round and round again. So you might have at one point chosen this career or this job based on this five-part framework and it might've been perfect five years ago. And now it doesn't feel so aligned. That's okay. Like what do we need to shift to make it feel more aligned? Or do we need to shift into something else? What would you say to somebody who's like, okay, I'm not at the 60-40, but I'm really struggling with a scarcity mindset around what else is out there for me? I mean, that's so real, right? It's very human to experience loss aversion. And so we're like, let me just stay in this thing that isn't aligned for me versus take a risk and maybe not have something. Right. So so many people stay in places that aren't aligned because of that loss aversion. And so we just want to work with the stories. You know, do we have evidence that it will be worse off? Right. Or are these stories that we're telling ourselves, do we have evidence that we might be better off and we haven't allowed ourselves to really live into that? Right. So really understanding the mindset that you're living in and see if you can shift to allow it to be more supportive. And what if the evidence is it will be worse off? I mean, listen, that can happen sometimes, right? So then we're like, okay, maybe I need to stay here for a season until the market shifts, until more jobs open up, right? And then just keep checking back at interval, right? Like sometimes we do need to take a job that's not aligned to pay the bills 100% and just keep checking back in with yourself and checking in on the burnout to make sure that you're supported enough that you can stay there for that season. And then in that time, are we trying to lean into getting our five components of purposeful work externally, potentially? So like even our zone of genius, can we tap into that with coaching a kid's soccer team or something like that? Can we tap into our values elsewhere like we've talked about, et cetera? Exactly. To cultivate a sense of nourishment. So we're kind of expanding our window of tolerance because the nervous system thrives when we have more resources than demands. And these five things are essentially resources, right? Working in your zone of genius resources you where you feel nourished that you're like, oh, I can pour, right? Having your needs met is resourcing. And so you just want to be able to cultivate those resources. How do we know if we should turn a passion into a job? I came of age in my career at a time where people were really conflating passion and purpose, especially in these like high performance founder spaces. And they're really different. Passion, like emotions, are transient, right? They're fickle. They're meant to change throughout different seasons of our lives. the example that I give is after my health crisis, I went to nutrition school. I went to IIN because I was really passionate about nutrition and eating for my body and what would support me with these new autoimmune diagnoses. And as soon as I finished the certification, I was like, oh, this was wonderful. I'm really passionate about this. But like, it doesn't make sense for me to build a career on it because this is a season that I'm passionate about this, right? There's not like a longer through line here for me. And so if you have the privilege of like a financial safety net, right and you can build a career around something that you're passionate about go for it right but they tend to be seasonal versus something for the long term because our passions do change they're supposed to yeah that's interesting so like if bread baking is like a current thing how do we know if something is more fleeting or if it is more core part of our identity the five-part framework right so like is this connected to your zone of genius or is this something that's just sparking a light in you for now right so going back to the five-part framework and that's a bit more stable than this thing that it's like, oh, I feel really excited about it, but it's not checking these other boxes. Like I'll give you an example. So I started my career in marketing and I worked in jewelry. I worked at Cartier and I've always really loved jewelry, but there was a moment where I was like, this is not values aligned, nor is it connected to the impact that I wanna have, but it's something that I'll always be passionate about, right? And then there were seasons that I was passionate about and there were seasons that I wasn't passionate about it and I'm coming back into a season of passionate about it, but I know that I don't wanna build a career there, but I'm like getting on the court with a jewelry design hobby, if you will. That's interesting. One of the reasons I think a lot of people feel really unhappy in their jobs these days is because we are confronted like never before in history with people who are doing jobs that feel both very easy and very lucrative. So you can go on social media and you can watch an influencer literally get paid six or seven figures to live their normal life, do their laundry, go get coffee, do these things and you're like, well, how am I supposed to be happy sitting here doing my desk work when I know that's an option for people? Yeah. I think what we're responding to is we're seeing people in their zone of genius and we want to be in our zone of genius. I think most people want to be in their authenticity and get paid for that. I feel like, you know, who wouldn't, right? And we're seeing that magnified, but then we're also not seeing the parts of their job that they do that are outside of their genius that are maybe they're excellent or they're eh, that they have to do to keep things going, right? They probably have to invoice people. There probably is some admin work, right? I even look at your career and I'm like, it looks so beautiful, right? And you're so clearly in your genius. And I'm sure there's parts that are a little bit unfun and outside of your genius that you just have to do, right? And so I think sometimes we are fantasizing. We're thinking that it's all sunshine and rainbows when it's probably more 60-40 for most people. And I think what we just really want is to be in our authenticity and our genius, but we can do that in another way. I think there's like the stat is like 57% of Gen Z wants to be an influencer. Yeah. What do you think about that? I mean, I think that's really interesting. And I would love to kind of get under the why, right? Is it because it looks easy and lucrative? Is it because that's their genius because they're digital natives and they feel like, well, absolutely. I'm so good at this thing, right? I would want to get under the why. I think it's because it just like, again, it feels like, like my sister meal preps all the time and then she goes to her work and like sits down and does her work she's a psychologist and she's like I have meal prep anyway if I could just get somebody to pay me for meal prepping but then maybe to your point it's like we see the meal prepping on social but we don't see the setting up of the camera and the editing and also like part of it is zooming out and seeing the other parts of it exactly like what is the totality of this career right like if you were shadowing somebody and wanted to get a sense of what their actual work was like over the course of a year there's going to be ebbs and flows for sure. So we need to get a sense of the fullness of the role. Yeah. Something I think about a lot is I know very few creators who have good mental health at all. There's a lot of like conversation online of, is it a difficult job to be an influencer? I think there are significantly more difficult jobs, particularly physically difficult. I think there's different types of difficult. I think being a creator is a very difficult mental health job. So if one of your skills is having really incredible mental health, I think you may be more set up to do it. But I think we don't talk about the negative mental health effects of having thousands of people sort of weigh in on your life and tell you everything you hate about yourself on a regular basis. Exactly. That requires so much resilience, right? And that requires so much work on the personal side of things like deep therapeutic and trauma work. I think certain people are designed for that. I don't feel designed for that. I don't look at it and think that that's what I want either, right? So I think it's getting to know ourselves better, but also getting to know the fullness of that experience better to your point. How can we stop comparing our jobs to other people's? One of the things I say to my clients a lot is that we can't actually be consumed by comparison if we're captivated by purpose. Oftentimes we're comparing because we're so disconnected from the things that we're really gifted at, from the thing that is our true calling. So we're looking at everybody else trying to take the notes from external when we need to come internally. And there's a part of social comparison that's actually helpful, right? It helps us know like, okay, I'm doing all right. But we as a society or culturally, we tend to have so much of that be outside of ourselves and not enough in source that then it really does feel very imbalanced. And so my invitation to people that are really feeling caught up in the comparison is like, let's come back to you. Like, what are your gifts? Where do you knock it out of the park? Where do you show up and shine? And let's double down on that versus the constant looking around. 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And I started by coaching the tech team at my company where I was like, like I work with them loosely, but I work with them every day. So it feels like distant enough. Let me just practice my skills here. And I just offered everybody a free coaching session. So I started to get my hours, right? In the same ways that, you know, therapists and psychologists, when they're newly degreed or credentialed, they start to get their training hours. So what are the ways that you can get your training hours? And as you get your training hours, you're going to learn so much about what you like, what you don't like, if it's aligned for you. And we can get that on the job and we can get that outside of the job too. So do you think that we shouldn't quit a job unless we have another one lined up? I think that we shouldn't jump from the frying pan into the fire. And what I mean by that is we should really understand what's driving us out of this role before we run into another one, because everywhere we go, there we are. So if we are part of the challenge, it's going to follow us to the next role. So we need to get a sense of like what's not working here. So when we move, it is more aligned. And, you know, a lot of people do feel more sound and more stable when they have a job lined up, because, again, kind of that loss aversion. And if we're looking for, if we could our job and we don't have a new job lined up, there's often the financial piece, right? We feel this financial instability and then we're panicked. And then that causes us to go into fight, flight, freeze or fawn. And then we can't actually acquire the job that we're looking for. So I think it's really important that we ask ourselves like what we need, right? If you're somebody that space is going to be really helpful and you're going to be able to take care of yourself in that space and you have a financial safety net, cool, jump off the cliff. If you're somebody that space is going to feel really disruptive to, then you might want to figure out a way to look while you still have a role. What's your best advice for imposter syndrome? I love those articles. My friend Rusha Katulshian and Jodi Ann Burry wrote for HBR, and it was Stop Telling Women That They Have Imposter Syndrome. And what I loved about these articles is that, so it was originally called imposter phenomenon. It wasn't a syndrome. And so basically what we've done is we've taken this set of typical behaviors and we've pathologized them specifically for women, which is a thing that happens, right? I think that so much of the time we're trying to like fix the women at work, right? But what if we instead fix the places where women worked? And like, we're not always the problem, right? Can we stop pathologizing? Can we stop saying that, you know, we are the issue? And can we look at this broader ecosystem? So if you're feeling that set of behaviors, right? If you're comparing and despairing, if you feel not good enough, if you feel like you don't belong, like honor those feelings, really understand what's underneath them. And then how can we cultivate a sense of belonging and community and psychological safety so that we feel like we belong in that space. So that's kind of fixing it from the outside in. But if we're in a space where they're not trying to do that, what agency do we have? I think looking at the stories, right, what are the stories that I'm telling myself about whether I belong here or not? Can any of that be reframed or shifted? And then community and allyship is so huge, right? So if you're not telling stories and it really does feel not psychologically safe and you really do feel like an imposter and the system's set up to make you feel that way, how can you call on your community and rally your allies and advocates in that space so it feels more psychologically safe for you? And maybe you don't erase the imposter syndrome, but you feel a bit more grounded and a bit more of a sense of belonging. So for example, if you feel like you are like the first, the few, the only in the workspace, maybe you're the only woman or the only person of color and you're like, I'm looking around, I don't see anybody like me and I don't feel like I belong, then, you know, who are people that can support you? So is there another woman that is a higher up that could be a mentor for you? Is there somebody on your level that could be an ally that could speak your name in meetings or back you up? Like how can you find bigger community in that space so that it feels a bit safer for you? Yeah, and even lateral community. I started a group of women, female hosted podcasters and I love it. It's just a WhatsApp group and we meet on Zoom calls every other month and we all talk about our problems and we talk about our challenges that we're facing. And it's so supportive and so fun. And for my imposter syndrome, or my imposter phenomenon. It's been so helpful to just hear that the things that I'm struggling with, I'm not alone in struggling with that. 100%, right? Because we often make ourselves the problem and we're like, it's only me. But when you have community around it, it sort of typicalizes the experience. Yeah. And then I'm like, well, maybe that's just like the price of the job, you know? Right, exactly. What are some signs we're in a codependent relationship with our job? It's so interesting because people will often hear the phrase codependency and they're like, isn't that for relationships? Like, how does that make sense in the workplace? And I think when we initially understood the language of codependency, it came from Melody Beattie and it was in the context of addiction and relationships. So I work with so many people that are like, no, no, no, like I don't have codependency. But Terry Cole came out with an amazing book last year. It's called Too Much and it's about high functioning codependency. And when I put that definition in front of my clients, everyone's like, yep, that's us. So high functioning codependents are people that are excessively helpful that will go out of their way to support or control or fix others to the point that it costs them their emotional or financial well-being. So going back to those core wounds, right, it is often the controllers and the masochists, right? The ones that are like, let me dot every I cross every T so you don't have a negative experience, but I take a hit. Or let me be so overly helpful that I don't get my own stuff done. And so I think a lot of us have a codependent relationship with work because we're getting something out of it, right? We feel like the good person, we feel like we're getting rewarded for it, but it is costing us something off in our health. Would this show up in like answering emails at all hours of the night? I feel like that constant availability is something I think of often as contributing to our burnout. And I can't tell if it's something we should all be setting boundaries around or if it's like what the workplace looks like these days. I think it's the why underneath that, right? It's like, well, why am I answering emails? Because I have this need to be overly helpful because I don't want a ball to drop, right? Probably some codependency in there or that I'm stuck in momentum. And so the why is really important. But as a coach, what's really interesting is so many people watch what I do more so than what I say to them. So they'll be like, oh, I noticed that you didn't respond to me on a weekend. I noticed that you responded during the business hours that you told me that you were available. And they're like, I'm learning from you. I'm learning that that's okay. And so I think it's actually super important that we can role model a different way of being. Not everything's on fire, right? We tend to live in a culture of urgency. And when you actually distill it down, how many things really are that urgent? But what if we don't think it's urgent and our boss thinks it's urgent? I think we have to look at the dependencies, right? So like if I hold up this thing, am I delaying something that genuinely has a deadline and genuinely is urgent? And I think we can get clarification on that ahead of time for the most part or use our best judgment. But few things, I mean, unless you're working in a hospital setting, right, are actually that urgent. I hear from people all the time, though, who want to set these boundaries with work. And then they're afraid they're going to get fired if they do it. Yeah. Prentice Hemphill has this quote where they say that boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. And I think in the work context, it's the distance at which I can honor you and me at the same time. So much of the time when we set boundaries, we think it's a vehicle to keep somebody else out, but it's actually to support you and it's to support me, right? Because if I set this boundary, I can show up in my highest and best, which is going to be great work product for you. And so we simply need to position it in this way that is supportive of both people. So I like to use this framework from the Center for Creative Leadership. It's called the SBIS model. It stands for Situation Behavior Impact Solution. So anytime you're giving feedback or you're making a request, I like to use this framework, right? So the situation is we have 10 projects and the behavior is we keep getting more projects added on and I keep diving into that. But the impact of that is I'm having less time to spend on each of the projects and I'm worried that our work product is going to suffer and that our team is not going to be as amazing as we used to be. So my request moving forward is, could we focus on seven projects at a time? And if we get an eighth, can we talk about how we're going to actually shift the balance? So you're bringing it back to their goals too. Like we all want to do great work together, right? We all have these jobs that we probably want to keep. We want to do great work together. How can we set this boundary together? Oh, I like that a lot because there's a lot of social media conversation these days around like, well, it's 5.01. So I'm not answering this email. I'm not going to be available. You pay me to be available during these work hours. I know a lot of bosses who just get extremely frustrated with the rigidity around that. And I think it's a very different conversation to say, hey, I want to rest, restore, replenish myself so that I can have the outputs that will make this company thrive Here what I need to get here I can maybe answer emails after X time most days but if there an emergency one day like I can be available Here's how you reach me during that time, et cetera. Exactly. And I think that there's a bit of agility that's required in that, right? You brought up the word rigidity, which is one of our core wounds. And so if we're excessively rigid, why, right? Is there something under that for us? And we need a bit of agility because different seasons will ask for different things. And we can still be boundaried, but the hard and fast, right? Sometimes we need to revisit that. What do you think about that conversation of like, this is what I'm getting paid for and I can I should only have to stick within this essentially. And I really understand it in theory. Right. And I really understand that people are so burnt out, stretched to the max, feeling under supported and under resourced. And we need boundaries. Right. But we are humans and we're operating in systems together and operating in systems with other humans does require a bit of agility. And so I think I'm always a fan of freedom in a framework of like, how can I create structure, but where there's like a little bit of bend and sway to it, like a bridge, right? Like bridges actually have to have a little bit of suspension so they don't snap. And I think our boundaries need to be that way, too. Well, and I think that going back to the five components of purposeful work, what is the need? Is the need like rest, restoration, relaxation? What is the need behind? I need to sign off at 5 p.m. exactly. Like you have to pick up your kids and you can't be late for them, right? Like that's very different than like, I've just decided. Yeah, exactly. And I think if you can identify your need, then you can be like, oh, can I get my need met and also do it in a way that works for my company, works for my boss, et cetera. Love that. Yes. How helpful is vacation when it comes to burnout? I was reading this study recently and it said that vacation is more transformative than therapy, right? For those of us that will let it be transformative because we'll go and we'll have these experiences and it shifts our way of thinking. It can be very helpful on the nervous system. And I think it's very person dependent, right? Because we know so many people go on vacation and they can't switch off and they're hypervigilant and they're worried about what's happening back home or they have anticipatory anxiety for when they start work again too. It's really person to person dependent and it depends on the type of rest that you need as well. Are there best and worst types of vacations when it comes to healing burnout? I think it depends on what type of burnout you have. Are you emotionally burnt out? Are you physically exhausted? Are you feeling that negativism, cynicism around your work? Which bucket is most alive for you? And then can you design something that speaks to that, right? So if you're emotionally burnt out, then you need emotional rest, right? So can you take some time maybe from being the family therapist? What is the type of burnout you have? And then can you meet it with that type of rest? Oh, I love that. So if you're emotionally burnt out and then you take a vacation with your family where you're doing a lot of emotional labor, no wonder you're going to come out not feeling any respite from that burnout. Exactly, right? Because you just doubled down on the thing that you actually need rest from. So, okay, give us the best vacation for the three types of burnout. Okay. Honestly, for all of them, I'm like, Vipassana, right? A meditation retreat, like a silent retreat where you're not doing anything, where you're focused inward and you don't have to extend yourself to other people. You don't even have to have a conversation. I think it can be so helpful. It can be a lot for some people too, especially if you haven't done anything like that because you can be so in your head, but that's also part of the practice. I also think for the third type, the type where you feel kind of like disconnected and just like that low key, like nothing's really doing it for me anymore. I think a vacation where you're feeling maybe more inspired, alive, you're that's the type where I picture maybe you're going in different museums and looking at art and trying to kind of bring back the parts of you online to feel a little bit more of a spark. I love that, like play and novelty. Yeah. Doing things with our hands can be really helpful because there's so many nerve endings in them. So from a nervous system perspective, it can be really engaging. And if we are in like a freeze or collapse response, doing things with our hands can be really nurturing. So if you're feeling that third type, like, oh, like maybe I, you know, go to a pottery class while I'm on vacation. Like, what are the things that I can do that will be helpful for my nervous system too? A lot of people feel more uncomfortable when they're in these moments of rest on like a weekend or on vacation. What is that because of? Like, what's happening there? I think there's two things. I think it's we've over-identified with our job, so we have no idea who we are outside of it. Last weekend, I was in Chicago, and I was at this changemaker's dinner. And the one rule was you can't tell anybody what you do for work. We were all talking about how it was interesting because what you do informs your lens of the world and how you speak. And so that part was so tricky. Like, as someone who is quite adept outside of their work and has lots of conversations outside of their work, I kept thinking of, like, well, if I can't give away any clues about what I do, how do I frame this? So many of us are just so over-identified with our work that when we step away from it, it feels like an existential crisis. Like, who am I if I'm not producing something or connected to this thing, right? I work with a lot of founders that have exited their companies and they are having an identity crisis because so much of it was connected to that work and that thing. And then the other piece is anticipatory anxiety, right? This is why we get Sunday scaries. This is why the last day of vacation is so intense because we're anticipating the anxiety that we're going to feel that Monday morning that we have to go back to things that we haven't touched for a week or two. Those are two very distinct things. I imagine they have two very distinct solutions. So first, what do we do about this over-identification with our jobs? I think it's really important to cultivate our identity outside of our work. I think of identity like a prism, like a crystal, right? There's all these different points. And so many of us have fine-tuned the point of work, right? It's like so prominent. But there's all these other parts of you that were probably really prominent and alive as a child. So there's a meditation that I do with my clients that goes back to different points in childhood where they were most themselves and what qualities they were on the court with. Right. So it's like, oh, I was like really community oriented or I did a lot of collaborative play. Right. So then how do we cultivate these other aspects of our identity, I think, is a really big one. OK. And so then the anticipatory anxiety, what can we do about that? Bring yourself into the moment because what we're doing is we're tripping to the future or the past. right? We're saying, well, last time I went on vacation, all these balls dropped or tomorrow is going to be so terrible. So can you keep bringing yourself back into this moment? Are there any kind of like pragmatic things that you find helpful? Like, is it good to make a to-do list on Sunday night to get things out of our heads? Is there stuff we can do preemptively before vacation to set up to actually enjoy the vacation, like little kind of tweaks? 100%. First of all, set your boundaries. Can people reach out to you? Can people not reach out to you? If there's an emergency, what qualifies as an emergency? Oh, wait, I love that. I want to stop there for a sec because you always see the email out of offices that are like, if there's an emergency, you can contact me by text at X, but nobody says, what is an emergency? Like what counts? That's so smart. And it's different for all of us, right? Like if you're an emergency medicine physician, it's going to be very different than like if you're a host or a coach, right? So define emergent, I think is really important. And then also who people can reach out to very specifically. If you have lots of projects that are in the works, identify who the point person is for each project. Talk to the person ahead of time. Be like, you are my point person. Here's what you can expect. Here's what's emergent and when you can reach out to me. Just being really clear and setting yourself up for success really well before you even go out on vacation. And then it depends on the person. Some people, some of my clients will want to check email once or twice throughout the trip or once a day, whatever they need to do to manage their anxiety, but also allows them to stay present. because if they're too much in that anxiety, they can't enjoy the moment, right? But if I give myself the 10 minutes a day, I can be okay. So you don't think that's bad? You don't think that's like getting in the way of us healing our burnout or really being on vacation to say, I'm gonna check my email once a day? I think it depends what we do with it, right? So if you then check your email and then you get involved in everybody's projects, that's a problem because you're not actually taking time off. But if it mitigated your anxiety because you saw what was going on and you saw that everything's okay, that can be really helpful. So I think you have to really know yourself and then design the rules based on you. Do you have a favorite tactic for Sunday scaries? I mean, an activity that really does support your nervous system, right? So a lot of the times we don't like complete the stress cycle, right? So we'll be stressed by something maybe tomorrow morning, but we're just letting that stress live in our bodies. So if you have the privilege of moving your body, can you go out in nature and take a walk? Can you do something with your hands? How do we not relapse right back into burnout when we come back from vacation and we're going through this email inbox and putting out all these fires? We have to change the behavior, the behaviors that set us up for burnout. Some of them are ours. Some of them are the system that we're operating in. Right. In my book, I talk about how like overworking and burnout are really like systemic and economic problems. And I think sometimes we have this tendency to blame ourselves. And we're like, well, if I just, you know, had more time in nature or more adaptogenic drinks, I'd be OK. Right. So there's a systemic piece that we probably can't shift that much. And then we want to look at our stuff. And what are the behaviors that led to that burnout and that overwork? And then what do I need to do to be different? And it can be a moment to moment thing. Right. But like, I noticed that in the past that I took on everybody else's emergency, even if there wasn't my emergency. So, okay, if someone has an emergency, can I just practice for today, not making that my emergency? Or I was working 50 hours, can I try going down to 45 and see what happens? Or I was working really outside of my zone of genius, can I just get on the court with one more aspect of my genius and see if that shifts something? So what was the behavior that led to the burnout that we can own? And then what can we shift? Is there a clear way to know, hey, I signed up for tech work, this is going to be 60 hours a week. That is just what you have to do. That's the price of admission. That's playing ball right now. Hey, this is what the economy looks like. That's what I have to do to work in the world. Like, is there a way to very clearly know, okay, this is shiftable and okay, this is just kind of like the price that we're paying to work these days. I actually really love this question because there is a cost of entry, right? And a lot of things are really seasonal. So early on in our careers, people feel like we really have to prove ourselves. And there's just like some stuff that you have to do that kind of sucks because you're just, you know, you're building your street cred and you're getting your skills developed, right? And then in, you know, tech, for example, you know, I have clients that are feeling really sort of disconnected from that industry because of the way that it's headed, right? And so, yeah, how can we kind of reconcile that this is a season? And if I work this season and I achieve these goals in this season, then maybe I can choose something else. One thing that I'm always navigating for myself too, and I wonder if you feel this way as like your own boss, is that there are some seasons that are so intense and you feel like you're sprinting just to keep up with everything. And then for me, there's some seasons that I'm like, whoa, I'm really not doing very much. Like this is borderline scary. And so I'm constantly negotiating those two spaces of in that time where it's slower, how can I catch up on rest and expand my window of tolerance so that I can build my resilience for the season when I know that I'm gonna have to sprint. And I'm wondering if we can sort of connect that to these seasons in our careers or industries or the market, right? So it's like, okay, this is an intense time where there isn't a lot of optionality. I kind of have to be okay with the 60 hours and they're paying me really well. So then can I use those resources to pour back into myself? And then can there be a season where I slow down a little? Yeah, and if the rewards aren't commensurate for that, if it's 60 hours and they're not paying you very well, like that's maybe something to think about. Exactly. Yeah, that's interesting. We're coming off of a season of pretty full-on work in my company. And I've been talking to the team around like, don't just add stuff in because we've been in this sprint mode. I had Cal Newport on the podcast, and he talks about how we really want our work to kind of go in this like, okay, we're working really hard. We're sprinting. And then you need to dip and rest and relax and recover. And so I've been talking to my team about that. Like, don't just add stuff in because stuff feels low right now. Like, take that as more of an expansive time to slow down and rest and replenish. Yes. Okay. So I believe that everything kind of mirrors nature, that everything goes in cycles. And we have this tendency to think that ambition is or success even is more for more sake all the time. I think it's really dysfunctional. And I think that ambition and success goes in cycles. Right. So there are seasons where you're supposed to grow and shine. You have a book out. Right. You have a new launch. And then there's seasons where we go underground and we don't know what the next thing is. And we use that time underground to rest and replenish so that when the season for growth comes, we have enough resources that we can. Yeah. And I think a big mistake a lot of us do is we go, oh, I don't have anything going on right now. So I'm going to write another book or do this thing or do this thing. And it's like, no, that's actually when you're supposed to be chilling. Exactly. Like find something to do right now. But this is the time where you catch up and you refill those resources. You've worked with thousands of different clients. What do the people who really recover from burnout, who really change their lives have in common versus the people who do not? The people that really go on to do even greater things are the ones that are coachable, right? They are willing to like bring in the expert to admit that they don't know a thing, to bring in the support and ask for help and get whatever they need to be able to resource themselves so they can get to the next level or they can recover from the burnout. What I noticed from people that are less successful in the recovery is that they don't actually let themselves recover. They stay in the freeze state or they stay in the flight and they're not using the tools that allows them to fully complete the cycle so that they can heal and move on to the next thing. What's one thing that anybody listening could do to lower their burnout levels immediately? I think that we can't underestimate the power of nature, right? It's mostly free and so many people don't have access to it, right? Like I live in an urban center and there's all of the research that says that, you know, certain identities and marginalized groups don't have access to green spaces and things like that. But even if we can get to a park and put our feet in the grass or if we can get to the ocean, it really does have a huge impact on our nervous system. I think as much as we can get out in nature, super helpful. There's also research around like having a plant at your desk. Like any nature is helpful, which is wild that it's that powerful that literally putting a little plant on your desk is going to make a difference. I'm a big plant lady. I read this thing that was like a plant that you've taken care of. Its roots can sense if you're up to two miles away. And I was like, oh my God, I love that. That's so cute. Isn't that wonderful? Our little plant baby. They know that we're in the vicinity. They can feel us. I love that. Okay. If somebody is listening and they're like, I have concluded that I'm going to quit. Like I've concluded I'm not at my 60% mark. I'm drained. I'm depleted. My job is the source of my burnout. What's your best advice for how they should practically go about that? I was navigating this with a client last week where they came into session just like really worked up. And it's something we've been talking about for a long time. And they're like, it's happening today. Like what's best practice? And what I think is best practice is literally you defining what's integrity for you. Because whoever you're quitting from or whatever you're quitting from is going to have an experience and you can't control that experience. I've had clients that have left an organization and when they've given that news to their manager, their manager has a huge abandonment wound. And so when they give that feedback or they give their notice, there's a really big eruption, right? And we can't control the other person's experience. So what we can do is transition with integrity. And integrity is not about right or wrong. Integrity is about wholeness. So as you transition out of this organization, what does integrity look like for you? Are there certain projects that you wanna wrap up? Do you wanna bring somebody up to speed? Do you want to train your replacement? What's integrity for you as you exit? Because you can't control the experience of the people on the other side. Are there sneaky signs that we can look for in the interview stage of a job that that job is going to be likely to cause burnout? I think that sometimes if somebody, if your manager or somebody that you're going to be working closely with has a similar core wound or a similar pattern of overwork, it can be really tricky for you to hold your boundary around that. Sometimes it can be healing, but then there comes a time where there's a bit of a tipping point. So watching for that. Are there questions we can ask in an interview to figure out like what their core wounds are? I think that there's things that we can watch for, right? So like, again, I have a betrayal wound and so I have a control mask. I think control is quite evident, right? So it's like if somebody is being really persnickety in the process, is really like controlling the calendar and the schedule and like you'll experience that feeling of control, right? That might be something that you want to sit with. Or if you're noticing that somebody has that martyrdom masochism mask and is really overworking and they're responding to emails at 11 p.m. or 5 a.m., right? There's little signs and signals. Even in the interviews. Exactly. That's interesting. Because every red flag that we see in the interview is only magnified over time. So watch for these little ones. Can you say the five again? The five core wounds? Rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and injustice. So if you have an abandonment wound where you felt like you were abandoned in childhood, the mask you wear is dependence, where you're overly reliant on others. And that might show up in an interview like how? If the hiring manager is overly dependent on their direct reports or overly emotionally dependent on their team, the rejection wound is if you felt rejected in childhood, the mask you'll wear is avoidance or withdrawal. So that might look like they're not responding to emails. They're super elusive and hard to get a hold of. They're hard to ground in the details. Humiliation, that's when we felt like our caregivers were embarrassed of us in our childhood. So like, for example, I grew up in a larger body and my parents were kind of fat phobic. And so there was that humiliation piece. So the mask we wear is masochism or martyrdom, where we're trying to be overly helpful to prove that we're worthy, right? And that one, I think you can really see it's the person that is doing way too much for too many people. And then there's betrayal, which is when we felt like our caregivers didn't show up in the way that we hoped. So we had expected a mom to be this way, but they were this way. So then the mask we wear is control and that can show up in being overly controlling in the calendar, the schedule, the way we set things up, the way that we do things like it has to be this process. You could also ask something like, how much independence am I going to have in my work or something like that? That's a great question, right? It can look very micromanaging. And then the last one is injustice where we felt like our individuality in childhood was restrained. So then the mask we wear is rigidity or perfectionism. And again, I think that one's quite obvious, right? When they're really expecting 110% and this almost unattainable standard that nobody can probably meet. And then the thing to watch out for is when our core wounds overlap with the workplace's core wounds. Right. Exactly. We want different ones, ideally. What do you think is the number one thing that's keeping people stuck or from making the changes that they want to make in their life? I think there's two things. Lack of self-awareness, right? Sometimes it's really hard to be honest about ourselves and where we get in our own way. And then our own nervous systems. Like I lived in a free state for a long time too, and it makes making choices and taking action impossible. And so I think those are the two. We always love to end with one homework assignment, something that people can do the second they turn off this podcast to begin to feel real change in their life. I want to do two though. Oh, can you give us one homework assignment, something we can do instantly to get a little bit more clarity on whether we should stay in our job or leave our job without having to do like all of the different purposeful work elements, but just like maybe one question, one tool, one exercise to figure out, should I stay or should I go? I want you to go and ask three friends that really see you what they think your zones of genius are. And then if you're not on the court with at least one of those in your current job, I think it's time to reevaluate. Love that. Okay. And then give us one homework assignment to begin to really heal our burnout at a deep level. I want you to go look at those core wounds because it's kind of miraculous how it can shift things just by starting to see where you're coming from a place of pain. So even if you just identify one wound and where it's driving your burnout, I think already that'll be so illuminating. I love that. Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your book, The Ambition Trap, and anything else that you want to highlight? Thank you so much. So The Ambition Trap, it's how to stop chasing and start living. It's about reconciling our relationship with ambition so it's coming from a much more harmonious place. I talk about painful versus purposeful ambition. So painful ambition is driven by the core wounds and causes burnout. And then purposeful ambition is coming from that much more generative place. and you can get it everywhere you buy books, whether that's your favorite indie bookstore or a national chain. And if people want more from you? You can learn more about me at aminaaltai.com. Spelling will be on the show notes and on Instagram at aminaaltai. If you're interested in coaching, just drop me a line. Perfect. Thank you so much, Amina. This was wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. You are the best. That is all for this episode of the Liz Moody Podcast. 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And I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody Podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. You've probably seen red light everywhere lately, and honestly, I was really skeptical of it. Like, how can one thing help with hair growth and skin and period cramps and thyroid health and energy? So I brought Dr. Vivian Chen, the founder of Loombox, onto the podcast, and she finally explained the science in a way that made all of it make sense. The short version is red light targets your mitochondria, which is the powerhouses of your cells. So it literally gives your cells more energy to repair, regenerate, and function better. That's why you can get all these localized benefits like less knee pain or better skin or a calmer stomach, and you get more systemic energy. 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